1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of milking animals by the use of at least one milking apparatus. The invention also relates to a milking apparatus.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Milking machines for milking of animals are continuously developed to more and more sophisticated fully automatic milking machines, which include a robot provided to automatically apply the teatcups of the milking machine to the teats of an animal. This is not an easy task and since the animals are living beings their behaviour when entering a milking station may never be fully predictable. Therefore when designing the robot of the milking machine one has for example to consider that the udder and the teats of the animal always may move. In recent time this has resulted in a development towards a constantly increasing degree of complexity of the control programs and the milking robot constructions. The aim of this development is to obtain an as high as possible success rate in order to avoid the problems which may occur when the milking robot does not manage to apply the teatcups to the teats so that no milking takes place. This development means that the cost for the automatic milking machine will increase. However, there is also a tendency that this development towards a high success rate results in the disadvantage that more time has to be spent at each milking occasion, and thus the capacity of the milking machine is not utilized in an optimal manner. Furthermore, despite of this development there will always be situations in which the milking of an animal does not succeed, for example because the robot does not manage to apply one or more teatcups to the teats of one or more animals. It may for example happen that the robot does not find or recognize all the teats. Furthermore, the milking may not succeed because the milking machine does not manage to extract the desired amount of milk from the udder. This may have many grounds, the stimulation of the cow is insufficient, the animal is ill, etc.
EP-A-480 542 discloses a method of automatically milking an animal by means of a milking robot including a robot arm carrying one or more teatcups and coupling means for applying each teatcup to a relevant teat of the animal's udder. EP-A-480 542 is concerned with the problem of checking whether the teatcup is connected correctly to the teat and in particular this check is performed by a temperature measurement, since in the milk flow the temperature is higher than outside.